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Closing the Achievement Gap

To close the achievement gap, the New Rochelle Corps of The Salvation Army with the help of Pistis is raising money to build a healthy meals program for local school districts and a mobile computer lab.

Healthy, scratch-cooked meals can be enjoyable for children, affordable for school districts, and valuable for teachers who need children to be nourished and focused.

President Barack Obama checks in on First Lady Michelle Obama and daughters Sasha and Malia as they prepare burritos while volunteering at the DC Central Kitchen in Washington, D.C., on Martin Luther King Day

Click image for interview with Robert Egger, founder of DCCK.

At DC Central Kitchen, they have prepared nearly 6,300 healthy, scratch-cooked breakfasts, lunches, and suppers each day for children at 10 public and private schools in Washington, DC. They are proving that healthy, scratch-cooked meals can be enjoyable for children, affordable for school districts, and valuable for teachers who need children to be nourished and focused.

For decades, educators have struggled to close the “achievement gap,” the persistent differences in test scores, grades and graduation rates among students of different races, ethnicities and, in some subjects, genders.

There are currently only 15 women CEOs of Fortune 500 companies this is less than 4%.

Women make up only 3% of clout executives of media, telecom and e-companies.

Women hold 17% of the seats in the House of Representatives.

Only 34 women have ever served as governors compared to 2319 men.

In 2011, women comprised 18% of all directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers, and editors working on the top 250 domestic grossing films.

The Forgotten Female Programmers Who Created Modern Tech

Jean Jennings (left) and Frances Bilas set up the ENIAC in 1946. Bilas is arranging the program settings on the Master Programmer. (Courtesy of University of Pennsylvania)

If your image of a computer programmer is a young man, there’s a good reason: It’s true.

It wasn’t always this way. Decades ago, it was women who pioneered computer programming — but too often, that’s a part of history that even the smartest people don’t know.

How did America—a country dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal—become one of the most unequal countries on the planet? Why do the nation’s leaders now spend so much of their time feeding at the trough and getting ever more for themselves? Why has public-mindedness in our leaders given way in so many instances to limitless greed?